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| - Protests in the wake of African American George Floyd's killing by white police officers in the United States have led to the toppling and vandalism of statues of controversial historical and political figures, often linked to slavery or colonisation. Near the White House on Monday, protestors tried to topple the statue of former president Andrew Jackson. In office from 1829 to 1837, he owned more than 500 slaves during his lifetime and was a key figure in the forced relocation of nearly 100,000 Native Americans. Several monuments depicting one of his predecessors, US president Thomas Jefferson, (1801-1809), have also been vandalised. He drew up the US Declaration of Independence but owned more than 600 slaves. And New York City is to remove a statue of former president Theodore Roosevelt, long criticised as a racist and colonialist symbol. The bronze sculpture of Roosevelt, which has been at the entrance of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) for 80 years, depicts the former leader on horseback towering over a black man and a Native American man -- who are both on foot. US protesters have been avidly targeting statues symbolising the Confederate States during the American Civil War, which pitted the pro-slavery South against the abolitionist North from 1861-1865. A statue of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, was toppled in Richmond, Virginia. Demonstrators in Washington also tore down a statue of Albert Pike, the only one of a Southern Civil War general in the nation's capital. Earlier in June, in Boston, a statue of Christopher Columbus was beheaded, another vandalised in downtown Miami with red paint, and third was dragged into a lake in Richmond, Virginia. The Italian explorer, long hailed as the so-called discoverer of "The New World," is considered by many to have spurred years of genocide against indigenous groups in the Americas In Prague, a statue to Britain's World War II leader Winston Churchill was covered in graffiti daubed with the words "Black Lives Matter" in solidarity with the anti-racist movement in the United States. A central London statue of Churchill was also defaced, with the words "was a racist" with protesters blaming his policies for the death of millions during famine in the Indian state of Bengal in 1943. The Belgian port city of Antwerp took down a statue of late King of the Belgians Leopold II, days after it was daubed with red paint by anti-racism protesters. Statues of Leopold have long been a target of activists because of his record of brutal colonial rule, notably the then "Congo Free State", now the independent Democratic Republic of Congo Others of his statues have been damaged in Antwerp, Brussels, and Ostend. In Bristol, southwestern England, a statue of local slave trader Edward Colston, was thrown into the harbour. His name remains attached to streets and buildings in honour of his funding of local hospitals and schools for the poor and officials fished the statue out. Several days later the statue of slave trader Robert Milligan (1746-1809) was taken down in the Docklands area of London. In the Dutch port of Rotterdam the statue of Piet Hein, a 17th century admiral linked to slave trading, was daubed. Oxford University's Oriel College has agreed to remove a statue of 19th century colonialist Cecil Rhodes, who studied at Oxford and left money to the college after his death in 1902. The white supremacist gave his name to the territories of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe and Zambia, and founded the De Beers diamond company. In Lisbon, a statue of 17th century Catholic missionary Antonio Vieira who took part in the conversion of indigenous people in Brazil when Portugal was its ruler, was vandalised. And in New Zealand the town council in Hamilton has taken down the statue of John Fane Charles Hamilton,a British commander who fought the Maoris in the 19th century. bur-rap/jmy/ach
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